


Ghosts of Eshoravee

by Zhisanin



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Angst, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Past Violence, Post-Canon, Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 08:03:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10872588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zhisanin/pseuds/Zhisanin
Summary: Do you know what we might find there? In Eshoravee?Thara asks slowly, and Mer Aisava looks away.We do,he answers.We were very lucky once, to escape from that place.He swallows, looks up again and holds Thara's gaze.And this is why we will go with you.





	Ghosts of Eshoravee

When Thara returns to the lodging house one evening he finds a courier waiting for him with a letter. It bears the Emperor's signet but there are hairline cracks on the wax showing that it has been opened, then resealed, and quite clumsily at that. It is addressed in a clean, secretarial hand; there can be no mistake.

He caresses the envelope slowly. By now he has gotten much better at hearing the voices of the silent. _There is no danger,_ the letter whispers to him, and he breaks the seal.

_To Mer Thara Celehar, Witness vel ama, greetings!_

It is written by the Emperor's own hand; Thara skims the lines quickly to gather what it is about, then returns to the beginning and reads again, this time slower. The letter is short and its wording is circumspect; Thara thinks Edrehasivar supposed it would be opened and read on the way. Still, it speaks of an outstanding issue in Thu-Athamar, and even though months have passed since that fateful Winternight, Thara immediately knows, with certainty, that the issue is called Eshoravee. With the extirpation of the House Tethimada, the fortress was also forfeit to the crown. Edrehasivar probably wants to make use of it... but not before the place is cleansed, in all senses of the word.

 _By airship at a time of your convenience,_ the letter says, thus Thara sits down to the small table in his room and begins writing letters. First, he replies to the Emperor that he can return to Cetho in approximately a week - this is still a stretch, the investigation he is working on would need more time but the most important answers should be found in that week and the apprentice he has been working with can deal with everything else. Then he makes a mental list of the names and places where he is awaited next, and writes the same note several times over: _our process will be delayed, most likely by no more than a week; we thank you for your understanding._

He works late into the following evenings, finalising his report to the Prince of Thu-Istandaär. The sixth morning finds him on the uncomfortable seat of a coach with a bag of belongings, on the way to Csedo where he can board an airship to Cetho. He is granted an audience the next day, just before noon. It does not even last ten minutes: the Emperor asks if he would undertake the task and Thara says yes, as soon as possible, and that is it, he is thanked and dismissed with the addition that he can discuss the details with Mer Aisava.

Mer Aisava is a very busy man; it is quite late by the time he knocks on the door of Thara's room, papers in hand. He introduces himself formally, then begins listing the arrangements already made, from the airships they would take on the way there and back, to the wagon, horses, and tools rented for them in Puzhvarno - he uses the plural and it makes Thara more and more suspicious - to the local hands hired to do the _landwork._ Everything is organised, probably better than Thara himself would have done, not a single detail is overlooked. Only one question remains.

 _Do you know what we might find there? In Eshoravee?_ Thara asks slowly, and Mer Aisava looks away.

 _We do, he answers. We were very lucky once, to escape from that place._ He swallows, looks up again and holds Thara's gaze. _And this is why we will go with you._

Mer Aisava then tells Thara several stories he heard and one of his own, and then Thara, too, knows what they might find there. The number of those who never returned from Eshoravee is high, too high, and while Mer Aisava is no blood relative to any of them, close-knit as the couriers are, his presence could actually help. But even if it does not, it does no harm either, so there is no reason Thara could refuse. He would not, either way; he understands the need for grief and closure.

They depart the next morning on board of the airship _Pride of Puzhvarno._ It is not a commercial ship but a smaller one, adapted to accommodate both passengers and cargo, just big enough to hold a family and their possessions. Under Varenechibel's reign this model was commonly called, for this exact reason, _Blessing of the Banished._ Someone else accompanies them, too: a woman who introduces herself as Merrem Curo, breeder, trainer and handler of hunting cats. She is ageless, probably somewhere between forty and sixty, short, thin and wiry, her hair cropped short, her face predator-like and Thara cannot unsee the uncanny resemblance between her and her two cats in the metal cages. The animals are half-feral creatures the size of a southern fox, with sleek grey fur, evil, yellow eyes and intimidating teeth and claws that they show off, hissing, anytime someone other than their handler steps too close to them. Which Thara, carefully, does not.

A courier is waiting for them in Puzhvarno; eager to escape his task, he rattles off the list of preparations he had done, only waiting for Mer Aisava's approval that would finally release him until the next evening, the earliest time of their planned return to Cetho. _The inn is full and we could not procure another lodging on such a short notice,_ he finishes regretfully, _but we paid a woman who used to serve up there to clean and ready the servants’ rooms for you._

The first catch in the process, and a major one. Thara never intended to stay in the fortress for the night and neither did Mer Aisava, that much is clear from the tension of his shoulders, the set of his ears, even though he thanks the courier's efforts politely. It is strange that no one was willing to provide a bed and a simple breakfast for good payment, but Thara suspects the people around Eshoravee would rather have a prelate of Ulis and an Imperial clerk outside of their houses, coins be damned. Maybe even the innkeeper thinks the same.

Other than that, everything seems to be in order, and indeed there is a wagon ready at the inn, loaded with spades, shovels, stakes, balls of hemp string and bundles of black linen - and ten simple, thin wooden caskets, the kind with handles at the ends. Maybe made just for the occasion; there is no way two men could haul a traditional one between them on the narrow path uphill. And then back down again, of course. The prelate of the Ceth'ulimeire has already agreed to provide sites for those - couriers or servants or anyone - who had died in Eshoravee with no one left to claim their remains.

The two men are there, too, both middle-aged, broad-shouldered, their faces so similar it is obvious that they are brothers even before they introduce themselves. _Our son served there,_ the younger one says, sounding almost apologetic for having accepted the job; Thara cannot shake the thought that their families and friends indeed see what they are about to do as something to apologise for, even if the boy wouldn't be found up there. More so if he would.

Merrem Curo lifts the two cages onto the wagon herself, then climbs up and sits between them. _We are ready,_ she says, in a deep but not at all kind voice, pulling her leather shoulder bag into her lap, and there is nothing left to do but climb up after her and find a place for the hour-long ride.

The horses pull the wagon in a steady trot, probably faster than the state of the roads would normally allow, because by the time they stop at the foot of the hill every bone in Thara's body is rattled and he tastes blood where he has bitten his tongue on a particularly big bump. The cats' mood hasn't improved, either; they are yowling indignantly and pawing the bars of their cage. Merrem Curo unloads the cages again, then lifts one, fortunately the bigger. _Will you?_ she asks Mer Aisava who cannot say no, though his impassive face is indicative enough; he takes the other cage and starts up the hill after her. The two brothers follow them with the first casket in their hands. Thara, lastly, hoists the bundle of spades and shovels onto his shoulder and leaves the driver to tend to the horses.

The plan is that once they arrive at the fortress they will start looking for the presumed graves while the paid men bring up the caskets but Merrem Curo says the cats need some time to calm down before they may begin, so Thara returns to the wagon with Mer Aisava to help the brothers. The air of Eshoravee's roofed central courtyard feels thick, choking, and there is more to the chill up there than the early spring winds. Thara, walking downhill again, forcefully closes out the thought of actually sleeping in that building from his mind.

They end up making two turns with the caskets and by the time they climb up to the fortress's gates again Thara's legs are protesting the repeated exertion loudly. Mer Aisava, though, doesn't show any sign of tiring - while he can be no more than a couple of years younger than Thara himself, Thara knows that the old saying, _what does not kill thee makes thee stronger,_ definitely applies to couriers. Thus, Thara is relieved to see that Merrem Curo, by whatever magic she possesses, has finally calmed her beasts; the animals are out of the cages, lying in her lap like ordinary pet cats, already harnessed, ready for their tasks. When the handler notices their arrival she quickly clips the twin leather leash onto the harnesses and pulls the looped end onto her wrist. The cats don't even deign to open their eyes at that.

 _Where do we begin?_ she asks, and Thara looks around properly for the first time. He knows some of the signs that can betray a makeshift grave or body pit - depression or cracks in the ground, discoloration or unusual looseness of the soil, uneven, mixed growth of the plants - but these mostly apply only to the shallow and newly disturbed places. Eshoravee was the property of the Tethimada since anyone can remember. As far as they know the whole ground under their feet could be filled up with bones.

He looks at Mer Aisava but the secretary only shakes his head slowly. Thara nods in acknowledgement and tries to concentrate, to think. The bodies must have been hidden inside the walls - however powerful the Duke Tethimel was, too many fresh graves in the vicinity of the hill would have called unwanted attention. Not in this central courtyard, though; this is paved with uneven stone slabs that, once put down, were never moved.

At a guess, he starts towards one of the passageways between two low-roofed buildings. He wants to get as far out to the edges as possible but Eshoravee is a labyrinth and they cross their own trails more than once before they find the outer stone wall and a smaller, open yard at it. This one opens at the back of the kitchen and was indeed dug up recently; dried or rotting garbage is thrown together into several half-buried piles along the wall. Thara swallows hard, but before he could say anything Merrem Curo steps around him. _Let us, now,_ she says, and leads the cats to the biggest pile.

The animals sniff about, stepping gingerly around the wettest parts of the piles, shaking filth from their paws now and then, but show no excitement and soon return to their handler, who then produces a shining metal rod out of her bag. It is as long as a man's forearm and about half as thick. She twists it - there is an audible _clack -_ then pulls, and under her hands the rod extends into a long, strong, sharp-tipped probe, which she shoves under the pile that the cats examined the longest. _Do help,_ she growls, and Mer Aisava, who is standing closer, grabs the end of the probe, and together they push it deep into the ground. At another grunt from Merrem Curo they pull it back, and the handler holds the tip in front of the cats' noses. They are not interested.

They repeat the process at several places in the yard, where the soil was disturbed, but soon it becomes evident that there are no bodies buried under the kitchen garbage - which is a relief and a worry at the same time. Finally, they have to move on.

They still cannot really comprehend the layout of the fortress. It seems as if the walls that enclose the living and working spaces had not been planned and built but grown like clumps of mushrooms, crammed beside, almost on top of each other, with twisting, narrow and dark passageways among them. They walk in circles again and again while looking for passages and shortcuts, and this is what makes Thara finally suspicious. If a building juts forward from the outer wall more than its depth inside, then there must be some hidden space within or behind. And so, under a tapestry they find the door that, once its lock is broken, leads to another, much smaller, enclosed yard. It looks like as if it was a passage between the back of the house and the outer wall, later blocked and walled in, like a hall added to the building itself, only without foundation or roof. Its secret does not withstand investigation - but who would have investigated anything in Eshoravee before Winternight?

The cats all but go mad the moment the door opens. They begin yowling again, their fur stands on end along their spine, their tails are puffed up and slashing rapidly, ears back and flat against their head. _Gods-dammit!_ explodes Merrem Curo and grips the leash firmly to not let them escape into the yard. _So we found it,_ she adds, and indeed they have. Along the thick outer wall the uneven soil is darker in patches, an unmistakable sign of having been moved, and probably more than once. It forms a too-long, too-wide ditch, and Thara doesn't need the cats' evidence to know that it is a body pit.

They don't enter. Merrem Curo pulls out two small packets from her bag; she unwraps them and the cats instantly lose interest in the pit in favour of the raw meat treats. She feeds, pets and praises them in a low, guttural voice similar to the cats' own growling, then stands and says that she would walk around the other parts of the fortress, _so as we don't miss anything._ Thara and Mer Aisava find their way back to the central yard to tell the helpers where they want the caskets - and to bring one themselves.

The brothers' shovels cut the ground. _You don't have to watch,_ Thara says in a low voice. Mer Aisava does not reply. His face is whiter than marble; he holds a notebook and a pencil that he brought up in his own messenger bag, presumably to write up the names of the dead so that the families can be informed later. The way he is clutching them tells Thara they are more like a lifeline for him now, a reminder of what awaits him back in Cetho - books and notes, and no carrying of messages anymore, no fear of disappearing in a shallow pit beside a stone wall.

His irritation, his almost palpable fear does not help now, though, and Thara repeats the sentence, _you don't have to watch,_ though he knows that in vain. Mer Aisava is a witness here, too; he does have to watch if he came this far. Turning away now would be worse than not coming at all.

So Thara lets him watch and he watches, keeping his near-panic in check somehow, and Thara respects him for it. Even more so as the first body is found: a careless shovel pushed down too strongly runs into looser soil, wedges itself into the seam of a brittle skull bone then pulls it out - an unexpectedly harsh reminder of the reality of death, even for Eshoravee, discolored, dried skin peeling from the bone, clumps of hair still clinging to it here and there, teeth showing half of a mad grin. The man drops the shovel and it falls with a sickening, double thud. The stench is faint but unmistakable, the wind whips it around the yard before pulling it out into the sky and both brothers must turn away to hide the urge to retch. Not Mer Aisava though; he murmurs an almost inaudible curse and looks away, but his voice and face are tight with anger, rather than disgust.

The skull lets go of the shovel under Thara's gentle fingers. He puts it into the first casket, now lined with one of the lengths of the cloth they brought, and returns to the pit, shovel in hand. He begins to unearth the remains of the body with slow, reverent movements, and soon enough the brothers follow his example. Thara, silently reciting the prayer for compassion, puts down the shovel and lifts the freed bones instead, one by one, carefully cleans them of as much dirt as he can with his bare hands, and puts them into the casket. When there is nothing more to be transferred he kneels beside the casket, lays his hand on the remains again and closes his eyes.

The memory is fresh, tinged with fear, pain, and anger. The dead wants the living to know who he was and what has befallen him: Thara listens but doesn't repeat any of them aloud, except for the name. The brothers don't need to know, and neither does Mer Aisava, though for different reasons.

He listens and he prays, finally he stands, covers the remains with the cloth, closes the lid and with a nod, he signals the somewhat green-faced helpers that he is finished. Then he takes a shovel and begins digging again. This must be the main place Tethimar and the hounds deposited the bodies; there will be several more like the first one.

Mer Aisava does not speak a word, just puts down his notebook, takes a shovel instead and falls in line with him. _It could have been me,_ his graceless, jerky movements say. _It should have been me._

Thara, too, keeps his silence. Words would be of no use. It could have been him; it should not have been anyone. Yet Csevet Aisava is alive and does now what he can to help those who are not. It is not a payment, not a price for his own life, but this understanding would only come later. For now, they break the dry, barren ground of Eshoravee again and again, labouring alongside the paid men, setting the pace, silently, grimly. Neither of them is used to the task; there will be painful blisters on their palms, come morning. But they don't stop.

They move the soil more carefully now, thus when they find the second body it is hardly disturbed. It is an older one besides, the remains mere bones by now, the voice of the dead only a whisper, a name, a touch on Thara's soul, _tell my mother I have died quickly and painlessly._

This is a promise Thara cannot make; he repeats her name to Csevet and watches for the grim nod of acknowledgement. It is easier now, without pretending.

They work relentlessly throughout the day. None of them think of eating, they only drink some water now and then. They find and save five bodies altogether. The dead, one by one, name Eshevis Tethimar, Odris Ubezhar and some of the _hounds,_ though not nearly all of them. The names implicate commoners and nobles alike - Csevet jots down every one, handwriting distorted, paper smudged with dirt, still better than troubled memory. Sometime later in the afternoon Merrem Curo comes back, this time without her cats and says she has found two other sites at the northern wall, both smaller than this; she has ringed the spots with stakes and string. Otherwise the place is clean.

By the time they finish working not even their helpers are disturbed by the remains; Thara suspects this is partly due to their relief of not having found their kin in the pit. But by then the sun is about to set so the brothers are about to leave. The older even invites Merrem Curo to leave with them. He says, only half-jokingly, that they had no idea beforehand who the cat handler would be but his wife would have his head if he had let a lady spend the night in Eshoravee - and the very much unladylike handler gruffly thanks and accepts the offer. Neither of them spares a thought for the well-being of Thara or Csevet, though, and so they remain in Eshoravee as the blue dusk slowly encroaches upon the hill.

The nights are still cold at this time of the year and they don't have the gear to sleep outside - it is either the rooms prepared for them or the halls left empty by the departing family. They enter the main building where the lords and their personal servants lived. The light of the small oil lanterns they find at the entrance dances with the shadows on the walls and it is as if Eshoravee had swallowed them whole. Even though they are alone in the fortress, even though Thara knows better than most that the dead do not hurt the living, he feels the tension, too. The walls, the floors, even the furniture is saturated with everything that were the Tethimada - nothing but time can bleach their essence from here. He refuses to call the feeling fear.

They walk down the ground level hall in silence, looking for their rooms to sleep in. The first open door leads to a washroom; Thara waves Csevet inside first and walks further down the corridor. The three rooms prepared for them are identical, tiny and empty except for a scrap-wood table at the head of the rough-hewn bedframe, but there are long candles in iron holders on the tables and the heaps of clean, soft-looking blankets on the beds are inviting enough after a day of hard work for both body and soul.

Csevet finishes washing quickly, and there is plenty of water left - cold but fresh - for Thara to clean himself of dirt and sweat thoroughly before donning his day clothes again to return to his room. This is when he spots Csevet standing on the doorstep of the other room, still in his day clothes, too, but with his hair already braided down his back for the night. He is visibly hesitant to go inside and while Thara can understand perfectly why, he cannot, for a moment, grasp what he wants instead.

Then, suddenly, he understands, sets the lamp on the floor and steps closer.

They don't even try to kiss, to pretend; just divest each other of their clothes as quickly as possible, and silently, save for the occasional groan or huff. They touch and grasp and grab; for a moment they almost wrestle, but the room is too small for that. Two steps are all they can take and Csevet's back bumps into the wall, Thara pressed to him - just for a heartbeat before he realises that Csevet has frozen and also the reason why.

He quickly amends by taking him in hand; Csevet shudders at the touch and lets his head fall onto Thara's shoulder, his hands slide up his back. Though Thara has to work a minute to restore Csevet's arousal, the small whimpers in the silence of the room tell him he does well. And indeed when he releases Csevet to steer him towards the bed he does not have to say _trust me._

The bed is narrow and hard but the blankets and pillows are thick and soft and at that moment Thara does not want to think about where they were brought down from. Csevet takes his questing hand and pulls it up, almost an embrace. _Just fuck me,_ he whispers and Thara can feel, as his spit-wetted shaft finds the way, that Csevet is in sooth ready. _Whose bed dost thou frequent, pretty boy?_ The question hovers on his tongue but he bites down on it as he thrusts forward quicker and quicker, then the raw pleasure washes it out of his mind. It is not his business anyway.

It lasts almost no longer than the occasions when Thara takes himself in hand; he spends with a grunt, then tries to keep up his thrusts until Csevet spends, too, into his own hand. A minute more, until they catch their breath, then Thara stands, turns away to scoop up his clothes and find a handkerchief to cleanse himself. Csevet doesn't stir. Thara can feel his eyes on him but doesn't turn back. For a moment he stops at the door, hand on the handle, but cannot think of anything to say, so just steps out to the hall and leaves the door open behind him.

Maybe they will be able to get some sleep now.

***

The next morning Thara wakes early - his room doesn't have a window but his sense of time tells him the sun is barely up. He washes the memory of his incoherent dreams out of his eyes, dresses, then eats some of the cold roast, pickled onions and rye bread they brought for the previous day's lunch and dinner. He has hardly finished when the gate opens and closes with two resonating clangs, a signal that the brothers have returned.

By that time Csevet is awake and ready, too. They leave the building with their bags in hand, in a silent agreement not to cross the threshold again. Somehow, the silence is not awkward. They greet the brothers and together they find the two other sites Merrem Curo marked for them.

They are indeed smaller than the first pit, and older, too; it seems that the Tethimada tried out several places to hide their dead before they walled off that passageway. In the first pit there lies a young woman, poisoned by the herbs she collected to induce miscarriage. Beside her, a servant boy who died in an honest accident falling down a flight of stairs when the water he was carrying sloshed onto the marble - the Duke Tethimel must have decided to bury him in secret to avoid even the unfounded suspicions. The last one is a proper, if unmarked grave; they have to clear away the fragments of a makeshift casket to reach to the bones of a _hound_ , killed in a drunken brawl that got out of control. He was an osmer, third son to his father; he is the only one, Thara thinks, whose remains would be claimed by his kin. Thara lays all three of them in a casket with the same care and says the same prayers for them. The judgment is not his to make.

The helper's son is not in there, and for that Thara is more than grateful.

Their task is finished by the early afternoon - eight of the ten caskets closed and locked, pits filled, stakes pulled up, tools tied in a bundle again and put in the ninth casket with what is left of the cloth used for the temporary shrouds. Eager to leave for good, the helpers quickly lift the first casket by the simple iron handles on their end. It is not much heavier than yesterday but the way downhill is no less dangerous than uphill, and while Thara is almost sure no one will fall, he would rather spend one hour more in the fortress than take the unnecessary risk of hurry. He takes the second one with Csevet, carefully balancing it so as not to shake the remains more than necessary. They need five turns to bring everything down to the foot of the hill where the same driver waits on the same wagon with the same horses harnessed to it.

Everything is the same and yet everything is different - Thara climbs onto the loaded wagon, squints into the sunlight, up towards the fortress, and has a moment to appreciate the warmth of life on his face before the driver clicks to the horses and the bone-rattling ride back to Puzhvarno begins.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to my beta, farevenasdecidedtouse!


End file.
